Category: Community Focus

I am so excited to share my experience with Junior Achievement of the Quad Cities. This is my third time participating in the program and each time I have this opportunity, my appreciation for the Junior Achievement program grows. Junior Achievement is a nonprofit organization that is committed to helping students gain the knowledge and skill to make sound financial decisions. This program is available for grades K-12 and helps aid our youth with work readiness and opens their mind to new potential for jobs that they could do within our community. I was fortunate enough to represent KONE Spares and spend 6 weeks in Mrs. Still’s first-grade classroom at Ridgewood Elementary in East Moline.

Our focus this year with my class was “Our Families”. We discussed similarities and differences within the families, categorized wants and needs, and described the roles that their family members played. We took time to discuss what being an entrepreneur was and how this impacted our community. The class also identified goods and services from our favorite local businesses and how those businesses fulfill our wants and needs. My most favorite part of this session was helping them create their very own birthday cake business. This allowed the kids to partner with each other, think as entrepreneurs, and apply the skills they had learned during our session to satisfy a need in their community. They really embraced it and were excited to share their business names, selling price of their goods, and what their specialty was going to be for their business.

Although the students were sad to see me go, I told them that I was excited to come back next school year and continue to help them learn. I encourage anyone else that would be interested in volunteering for Junior Achievement to reach out to myself or to visit their website at www.ja.org.